Big Plane Hunters - Feedback appreciated!

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share the game idea I am working on right now. Before I start prototyping I wanted to gather some feedback as well as see if you know of similar games that are out there or games that would make sense for me to look at for reference. Please be aware that this is a lengthy read, but I would appreciate it if you make it to the bottom. :)

______________________________________________________________________
Overview: Big Plane Hunters is a two player card game that also involves rolling some dice. Players take on the role of "Planar Hunters". Heroes that are tasked with hunting and capturing dangerous monsters from different planes of existence in order to accumulate Victory Points. Players not only need to watch out for the monsters, but also for the opposing group of hunters, as they may try to kill your quarry to mess with your strategy or even capture it from right under your nose. Players will recruit heroes, sell captured monsters or harvest their "Planar Essence" in order to craft powerful items to aid them in their hunt!

______________________________________________________________________
Winning the Game: The first player to reach 15 Victory Points (number will likely change during play-testing) wins the game. In addition, if a player at any point is left with no hunters, they immediately lose the game.

______________________________________________________________________
Players: Currently I am designing the game for two players mostly for the reason that this is my first design and I think it is easier to just design for two players. However I think the game could work with more players, but since I haven't even play-tested the 2-player version yet I will cross that bridge when I get there.

______________________________________________________________________
Components:
- 1d6, 1d8, 2d10 (d100), 1d12
- 168 cards (72 monster cards for the "Planar Deck", 30 "Planar Hunter" cards for the Tavern deck, 30 Quest cards for the "Quest Deck", 6 "Hunter Recruit" cards which serve as the starting hunters for the players, 30 item cards for the Crafting Deck).
- One "Aggro Token" (a coin type token with "Player 1" on one side and "Player 2" on the other side used to determine who the monsters will attack).
- Several coin tokens to represent gold

_______________________________________________________________________
Game setup:
- Shuffle the Planar, Tavern, Crafting and Quest decks
- Decide who is player 1 and who is player 2 however you like (for example, flip the aggro token. You then become the player that shows on the token)
- Randomly deal three Hunter Recruit cards to each player. Each player chooses one of them to be the "active hunter", the other two will be "reserve hunters". (These "starter" hunters are balanced against each other and only differ in the type of damage they deal - there is one for each damage type).
- Reveal 4 hunter cards from the top of the "Tavern Deck" and place them on the table
- Reveal 4 item cards from the top of the "Crafting Deck" and place them on the table
- Each player then reveals the top card from the Planar Deck and places the reveled monster in from of them (player 1 chooses an reveals a card and places it in front of them, then player 2 does the same thing)
- Deal 3 Quest cards to each player (these cards are not revealed until the a quest is completed)

_______________________________________________________________________
Taking actions:
- During each player's turn they can do one of the following actions:
- Attack one of the monsters in play with the active hunter
- Switch their active hunter with a reserve hunter
- Attempt to capture a monster
- In addition to the above, players can also do the following actions as many times as they want an in any order:
- Recruit hunters reveled from the Tavern Deck (however a player cannot have more than 4 in their reserve)
- "Craft" an item
- Sell any number of their captured monsters for gold
- Score any number of completed Quests

________________________________________________________________________
Turn order: Players alternate taking their turns, however after each player's turn, there is a "monster turn", in which both monsters attack the active hunter of the player that is currently holding the monster's "aggro" (a player gains aggro by attacking and attempting to capture a monster).

So it goes:
- Player 1
- Monsters
- Player 2
- Monsters
- Player 1
...
________________________________________________________________________
Attacking a monster: Attacking is as simple as declaring you want to do so and saying which monster your active hunter is attacking. The hunter then deals its attack value in damage to the monster. However, monsters have "resistances" and "weaknesses". For example a Wraith may have a weakness against "Light" type damage.

Weaknesses are represented as additional dice rolled when dealing damage. For example the Wraith card may say:
- Weakness: Light +1d10. This means a hunter dealing light damage would do its normal damage +1d10.

Resistances are the opposite of this. If a monster had a resistance to Light damage it would say:
- Resistance: Fire -1d6. This means a hunter dealing fire damage would do its normal damage minus 1d6.

If a monster's health is even reduced to 0 it is killed and the player that killed it received half it's "sell price" (listed on the card) as a reward if it was the monster on their side of the board. If a player kills the opponent's monster he or she doesn't get gold, but they at least denied the capture or kill for the opponent.

When a hunter deals damage to a monster, turn the Aggro Token to the side for the player that just dealt damage. So if player one was the the last to deal damage to a monster, the aggro token on that monster should have the "Player 1" side face up.

________________________________________________________________________
Switching: A player can chose to switch an active hunter with one of their reserve hunters. He or she may choose to do so for several reasons:
- The active hunter may not survive one of the monsters next attacks
- The active hunter may not be dealing the desired damage type
- A reserve hunter may have a special ability that could come in handy during the next combat

________________________________________________________________________
Capturing a monster: Capturing monsters alive provides the greatest rewards: Victory Points. In addition it offers players flexibility as they can sell monsters to recruit additional hunters, or use monsters to draw a card from the Crafting Deck. In order to capture a monster a player simply needs to declare they want to attempt to do so. A player must then roll a percentile die and compare its result with the "capture difficulty" listed on the monster card. If the player manages to equal to or under the listed value, the monster is captured. However all monsters have three different capture difficulties listed on the card which are dependent on the remaining health on the monster:
- Full health
- Half health
- One health point remaining

In order to keep the math simple, a monster's starting health will always be a round number. If a player wants to capture a monster that has remaining health between full but more than half, they will need to beat that capture difficulty. If the monster's health is half or less but more than one, then they will need to beat the second difficulty. Lastly, if the monster's remaining health is exactly 1, they will need to beat the third difficulty. Normally, the more wounded a monster is the easier it will be to capture. This means players need to try and lower the health as much as possible if they want to have the highest chance of capturing a monster. However this is risky because it opens up the possibility for the opponent to "steal" the catch or kill the monster.

Players can only attempt to capture an opponent's monster if that opponent currently has no active hunter (usually this happens when a player's active hunter is killed during the monster phase, however it could also happen as a result of a card or effect).

________________________________________________________________________
Recruiting Hunter: Players are able to recruit any of the hunters revealed from the Tavern Deck. In order to do so they have to pay the hunters "recruitment cost" which is listed on the card. More powerful hunters cost more gold to recruit. The cost is measured in gold which players can gain by selling off some of their captured monsters.

When a hunter is recruited the player placed him or her into their "reserve area". Player are not able to recruit new hunters if their reserve is full (has 4 hunters in it already).

________________________________________________________________________
Craft an item: In order to "craft" an item players need to pay its cost. Items are not acquired with gold, instead each item requires a number of "Planar Essences" in order to be "crafted" (gaining that card). In order to gain planar essences players have to "harvest" some of their captures monsters. When a monster is harvested a player gains a number and type of essences listed on the monster card. Harvested monsters still count towards Victory Points, however they cannot be sold after being harvested. Each monster can only be harvested once.

Planar essences do not persist between turns like gold. Players are able to overpay in order to craft an item or items, but any left over essences are lost.

Example Item 1
Item: Potion of Fire
Cost: 3 Fire Essences
Effect: Change the damage type of your active hunter to Fire until the end of your turn.
Type: Consumable (this card is discarded after being used)

Example Item 2
Item: Potion of Reflection
Cost: 3 Death, 3 Earth
Effect: Play this when an opposing hunter attacks your monster. The attacking hunter takes damage equal to the damage he or she dealt (excluding damage dealt due to weakness).
Type: Consumable (this card is discarded after being used)

So in order to craft the Potion of Fire I need to harvest monster for a total of at least 3 Fire Essences. Lets say I have one monster that can be harvested for 1 fire essence and two wind essences and another monster than can be harvested for 2 fire essences. I could harvest those two monsters to craft the item, however the two wind essences for go to waste.

_______________________________________________________________________
Selling monsters: Players can chose to sell their captured monsters for gold. When a player sells one of their monsters they receive an amount of gold equal to the "sell price" listed on the monster's card. Sold monsters are discarded and do not count towards victory points any longer. Players will need to sell monsters in order to get gold to recruit more powerful hunters.

_______________________________________________________________________
Scoring a Quest: Quests are kept secret by each player until they choose to "score it". In order to score it a player needs to have completed the scoring requirements listed on the Quest. Once a quest is scored it is placed face up in front of the player that scores it and that player draws another card from the Quest Deck.

Example Quest
Scoring requirements: Have three different Dragons in your Monster Pen (this is the name of the pile of your captured monsters)
Reward: 3 Victory Points

So Quests are additional secret objectives that players may choose to pursue in order to gain additional Victory Points. Since the game is mostly about open information, I wanted to add this layer of hidden information to give players additional incentives to maybe go for monsters that are not the "easiest" or most convenient to get.

_______________________________________________________________________
Monsters and the Planar Deck: I wanted to share some additional information on monsters and the monster deck in the hopes that it may make certain concepts clearer.

The 72 cards in the monster deck are not all completely unique monsters. Instead, each monster type has a lesser, a greater and an elder version in the deck. There are always 3 copies of the lesser, 2 copies of the greater and 1 copy of the elder versions in the deck. This means that the 72 card deck has 12 different monster types (two for each of the six planes).

Here is an example of a Lesser -> Greater -> Elder progression of the Red Dragon monster type:

Name: Lesser Red Dragon
Home Plane: Fire
Essences: 3 Fire
Sell price: 2 Gold
Attack: 3
Health: 16
Resistance -> Fire: -1d6
Weakness -> Water: +1d12
Victory Points: 1
Ability -> Breath Fire: When Greater Red Dragon attacks, it deals 1 damage to all hunters in the reserve of the attacked player.

Name: Greater Red Dragon
Home Plane: Fire
Essences: 4 Fire, 1 Wind
Sell price: 5 Gold
Attack: 5
Health: 20
Resistance -> Fire: -1d8
Weakness -> Water: +1d8
Victory Points: 2
Ability -> Breath Fire: When Greater Red Dragon attacks, it deals 2 damage to all hunters in the reserve of the attacked player.

Name: Elder Red Dragon
Home Plane: Fire
Essences: 5 Fire, 1 Wind
Sell price: 7 Gold
Attack: 8
Health: 30
Resistance -> Fire: -1d12, Wind: -1d6
Weakness -> Water: -1d6
Victory Points: 3
Ability: Breath Fire: When Greater Red Dragon attacks, it deals 4 damage to all hunters in the reserve of the attacked player.

__________________________________________________________________________
The Hunters: The Tavern Deck is made up of 30 unique Hunters. There are 5 hunters per damage type (Fire/Water/Wind/Earth/Death/Light). More powerful hunters are balanced by costing more gold to recruit.

Example Hunter 1
Name: Tyr Brightheart
Recruitment cost: 6 gold
Damage Type: Light
Attack: 6
Health: 22
Ability: When Tyr Brightheart attacks, heal 2 damage from any of your reserve hunters.

Example Hunter 2
Name: Lashriel Surehand
Recruitment cost: 3 gold
Damage Type: Earth
Attack: 2
Health: 15
Ability: Lashriel Surehand gets +10 to any capture attempts he makes.

__________________________________________________________________________
Design concerns and feedback requests:
- I want to make sure that attacking your opponent's monster or attacking it is a viable option in certain cases, but it cannot be so good an option that players will almost always try to capture or attack the opponent's monster. One way I am trying to balance this is with the "aggro" system. Trying to capture or attack any monster means that they will attack your active hunter during the "monster phase". So it is risk/reward. In addition it is a bit harder to capture an opponent's monster since you can only attempt that when they have no active hunter. Do you have any input on this topic?

- Balancing will be a tough challenge, mostly because I am new to designing board games. I want the fights with monsters to feel epic and the monster to be dangerous, but I also don't want the hunters to feel like throw-away cannon fodder. In addition I will have to balance the hunters against each other, which hopefully can be done via the recruitment cost.

- Selling monsters may have a bad after taste since you are sacrificing victory points for gold. Hopefully though those decisions will feel meaningful and you will get a sense of progression since you are selling monster to gain new and more powerful heroes. Also you may be forced to sell some monsters if you are close to losing your last hunter since that will mean you lose the game.

- It may just not be fun. This of course is always a concern before that first play-test session. I am fully aware that an idea may seem very fun in my head but may not actually play out nicely. Hopefully if it ends up being not fun in its first incantation, it can be tweaked and modified to become fun.

WOW! Thanks for reading this far and I very much appreciate any feedback you have, positive as well as negative.

And of course is something is unclear please feel free to let me know and ask questions. Thanks!